Zimbra OSX to external drive

I have Zimbra installed in OSX 10.4 server and it is a fairly default install but I am running out of storage on my internal drives. I would like to move the zimbra data(users inboxes) to a directory on the external drive(raid mirroring turned on). How is the best way to go about doing this?

what type of raid setup? mirrored arrays aren't really recommended unless it's an 0+1 array with SAS drives. if this is more of a test environment, you could move the conf, db, index, log, logger, redolog, & store directories to one external device and backup directory to another external device. use softlinks to make the connections, and free up a ton of space.

BUT.........

be extremely careful with startup services as the OS might not mount the external drives properly. a safer alternative would be to add an internal array and make it the /opt directory.

would not recommend running two (or more) fw800 drives on the same bus in an raid scenario. if it's one of those maxtor drives with two harddrives in the same chassis, you definitely don't want to put your data store on it. if you have an xserve, get a couple of matching drive modules, make some partitions and move the zimbra data onto 'em.

would it be more advisable to first create a linux based vm to house zimbra in. then to move the vm to the external drive? I was thinking this would be easier to backup and to recover from if there is a hardware problem on the server itself.

would it be more advisable to first create a linux based vm to house zimbra in. then to move the vm to the external drive? I was thinking this would be easier to backup and to recover from if there is a hardware problem on the server itself.

That would work in terms of giving you the flexibility to move things around on the host machine(s). Remember though: there will be a performance hit to consider (for my small install it makes little or no difference, but for a larger user-base I would test first to make sure).